A podium finish from Chelsea Denofa has been long overdue-until this past weekend when he and his team finally made it happen with a 1st place finish in Long Beach California at Round One Formula Drift! Battling against inclement weather and varying surface conditions, the team had their work cut out for them. Luckily, things cleared up just in time for top 16 and it made for an amazing show. Chelsea went head-to-head with Geoff Stoneback, Chris Forsburg, Vaughn Gittin Jr, Ken Gushi, and Fredric Aasbo with out any hiccups. Chelsea Denofa Motorsports is the 2016 Formula Drift points leader and they plan to keep it that way! Next stop is Atlanta, for Round Two of Formula Drift. Be sure to check in for the videos during Round Two of Formula Drift-Atlanta, coming up the first week of May!

Long Beach, Calif. – April 10, 2016 – Formula DRIFT presented by BlackVue returned to Long Beach for the kickoff event of the 2016 Pro Championship season. Chelsea Denofa in the BC Racing / GT Radial BMW earned his first ever Formula DRIFT victory to start the season at the top of the standings.

Round 1: Streets of Long Beach kicked off the new season in dramatic fashion. The volume of rain, the variable surface conditions of the street course, which made for treacherous conditions in general during Friday’s practice, created a rain delay, which ultimately resulted in the Series making the decision to draw on a provision of the Sporting Regulations that allows the Series to forgo Qualifying in the face of inclement weather. Drivers were placed into the Top 32 bracket based on their 2015 ranking. The weather held up for the main competition and the drivers were able to give the fans a great showing to start the season.

“The weather definitely added a challenging element to this event, but the action was as intense as ever to kickoff the season,” said Jim Liaw, President of Formula DRIFT. “Despite the rain, the fans came out to show their support. This season is already shaping up to be one of the most exciting and for the local fans we will keep things going with the Super Drift competition next weekend under the lights during the Long Beach Grand Prix.”

Returning champion and winner of Round 1 in 2015, Fredric Aasbo in the Rockstar Energy / Nexen Tire SR by Toyota tC battled through some car issues to meet Odi Bakchis in the Ark Performance / Feal Suspension / Falken Tire Hyundai Genesis in the semi-finals. Aasbo edged out Bakchis to enter the Finals. The 2015 runner-up Ken Gushi in the GReddy Racing / Nexen Tire SR Toyota 86 faced off against Chelsea Denofa in an exciting battle. Denofa beat out Gushi to face the champion in the Finals, which gave Gushi the third place event finish. With momentum on his side, Denofa out matched Aasbo to take his first ever Formula DRIFT victory. This also marks the first victory for tire supplier GT Radial.

“I’d like to thank everyone that I work with including GT Radial, BC Racing, Turbo by Garrett, and everyone that helped with the car,” said Chelsea Denofa, winner of Round 1: Streets of Long Beach. “We have been working on this for so long and so hard and through mechanical failures to finally be able to work together and push through to get on the top.”

The 2016 Formula DRIFT Pro Championship will continue to Round 2: Road to the Championship on May 6-7 at Road Atlanta. For more information visit: www.formuladrift.com and find Formula DRIFT on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Tune into Formula DRIFT on CBS Sports and check your local listings for airtimes.

April 5, 2016 (Signal Hill, Calif.) – The new Formula Drift season will bring a new vehicle for Formula Drift veteran Kyle Mohan, who will park his familiar Mazda RX-8 for a new car built on the Mazda MX-5 platform.

The KMR-built Mazda MX-5 is new but in some respects will be familiar to Mohan, as it is powered by a turbocharged, nitrous-fed three-rotor engine developed by Mazdatrix. Improvements to virtually every aspect of the drivetrain has resulted in more horsepower than the engine has produced before,

“I think ever since we first built the RX-8, we always considered what kind of car we would eventually replace it with,” said Mohan. “However as a small team, we always felt that we would be better off by continuing to improve the RX-8 instead of trying to build an entirely new car. But we made the decision last season to switch to the MX-5, and not only that, to build it to make the best use of our GT-Radial Champiro SX2 tire package. Considering how quick and nimble it felt in our first tests, I think we’ve accomplished that.”

Recent testing with the car left Mohan looking forward to competing with the car in the first Formula Drift event of the season this weekend on the Streets of Long Beach. Mohan grew up and lives in Long Beach, and enjoys strong support for his team in the city.

“Testing the car at first was very different than the RX-8,” said Mohan. “But I felt extremely comfortable right away. After burning down my first set of GT-Radial tires I could really feel the potential that this car has. I have to give a lot of credit to our partners and our crew for giving us the resources to get this new car completed. There were a lot of long days and lost weekends to get ready to be here, and I hope to bring them a good finish this weekend. I’ll be honest – slinging our brand new car in between those concrete walls makes me a little nervous, but we did the exact same thing when we first came out with the RX-8 and there’s no event I enjoy more than Long Beach.”

Qualifying for this weekend’s Formula Drift season opener on the Streets of Long Beach will be streamed live on Friday, April 8 at 4:00 PM EST. On Saturday, April 28 the round of top-32 competition will be streamed starting at 2:00 PM EST with the round of top-16 starting at 6:30 PM EST. All the sessions will be streamed at Formulad.com

About Kyle Mohan Racing

Kyle Mohan competes in the Formula Drift Pro Championship in the no. 99 GT Radial / Mazdatrix Mazda MX-5. More information can be found at www.kylemohanracing.com.